Teenage Engineering OP-1 Mini Synthesizer

I mentioned Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 mini synthesizer in a recent Quality Linkage column, but felt it deserved a post of its own, so here we are. This thing may look like a toy, but really it’s a tour de force of design that packs a ton of functionality in a small frame.

They have a quick guide that shows you a few things you can do with the OP-1, or if you really want to dive deep, you can read through all 17 multi-section chapters of the full manual. Alternatively, you can watch Jeremy Blake Leaird-Koch’s Red Means Recording YouTube channel, particularly his OP-1 playlist. He does some amazing stuff with this synthesizer, like so: